Calls for massive investment in UK's scientific innovation base

10 November 2014

A review of the UK’s network of catapult centres for technology innovation centres has
called for major expansion of the programme into new areas.

The UK has a network of seven catapult
centres. Each one is created as a centre of technology
and innovation in a specific field, bringing together academic and commercial research
and development, with a view to driving economic growth. They include Cell
Therapy, Connected Digital Economy and Satellite Applications; one of
two new catapults due to open next year is Precision
Medicine.

The catapult network was originally proposed by Dr Hermann Hauser (a noted technology
entrepreneur) in 2010, who has now produced a formal review of the network to
date for Innovate
UK, part of the department for Business, Industry and Skills.

Dr Hauser has now produced a reviewof the catapult network, in which he calls for 30 additional
catapults to be established by 2030 at a rate of one or two per year, in fields
including translational
genetics and synthetic
biology, as well as non-animal technology and smart and resilient
infrastructure.

This
expansion, alongside sustained investment in the catapults and improved
engagement with small businesses and universities, was said to be essential to
create a translational infrastructure in the UK that could allow it to compete
as a global leader. Alongside ongoing investment in the science base, these
measures were proposed as being necessary to successfully ‘rebalance the UK
economy’.

It
was also proposed that the current catapult funding model, which combines
public funding with income from competitively-won commercial and public-private
research and development contracts, should be retained. The total running costs
of the proposed expanded network would be £400 million per year, requiring Innovate
UK’s budget to be approximately doubled to £1 billion per year.

Business Secretary Vince Cable MP said that the review’s findings would feed into the
government’s new Science and Innovation Strategy to be released in December
2014.

Hermann Hauser commented: "The UK is playing catch up with the best innovation systems in
the world in translational infrastructure, so I was very encouraged to see how
rapidly we are closing the gap".